055 in shell) individually. Reward.  Selleck Ipilimumab Selective reward encoding was seen in 56% of core and 38% of shell neurons, although there was only a trend towards a statistical difference between regions (χ2 = 3.0, P = 0.08). Phasic responses developed shortly after the rewarded lever press. An example of a representative neuron that showed reward-related firing is shown in Fig. 3A. Previous studies have shown that cells that encode information about both cues and outcomes may be particularly

important for supporting normal goal-directed behavior (Schoenbaum et al., 2003a). Given this, it was possible that there would be a population of reward-encoding neurons that also expressed cue selectivity. Overall, there were significantly more neurons encoding this conjunction in the core (28%) than in the shell (5%) (χ2 = 8.04, P < 0.005) (Fig. 3B). Thus, despite similar rates of cue and outcome encoding separately in both regions,

core neurons were more likely to encode more explicit stimulus–outcome representations than shell neurons. Instrumental responding.  Next, the neural correlates of lever-pressing behavior were investigated. mTOR inhibitor In the first analysis, active lever presses were examined regardless of whether there was a cue present or not. A large percentage of neurons were involved in encoding some aspect of lever-pressing behavior. Specifically, 72% (36/50) of core neurons were phasic around the press, whereas 85% (34/40) of shell neurons were phasic. As in previous work, some cells were phasic

prior to the press (e.g. Fig. 4A), some following the press (e.g. Fig. 4B) and some encoded both approach and response (not shown). The majority of phasic neurons encoded both approach and response in both regions (55% in core; 58% in shell). A much smaller proportion in both regions (14% core; 18% shell) was only active during the approach, and a slightly larger proportion was selectively phasic following the response (31% core; 24% shell). Next, lever pressing between the active and inactive lever was assessed. Although Cell Penetrating Peptide the majority of cells recorded showed some form of phasic press-related activity, there was little evidence that these same neurons showed similar phasic firing on the inactive lever (Fig. 4C). Both core and shell neurons showed significantly greater phasic activity for the active compared with the inactive press, but there were no reliable differences between the core and shell in the percentage of phasic neurons encoding active and inactive lever presses (χ2 = 1.01, P = 0.31) (Fig. 4C). Further, whereas the population for active lever pressing was inhibitory and locked to the time of press, there was no such general pattern for the population of inactive presses (Fig. 4D). These findings together suggest that phasic press-related activity is related to tracking the goal instead of merely encoding the motor response alone. Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer-modulated lever pressing.